Rumor Has It...

Comedy, Drama, Romance

Jennifer Aniston	Sarah Huttinger
Kevin Costner	Beau Burroughs
Shirley MacLaine	Katharine Richelieu
Mark Ruffalo	Jeff Daly
Richard Jenkins	Earl Huttinger
Christopher McDonald	Roger McManus
Steve Sandvoss	Scott
Mena Suvari	Annie Huttinger
Mike Vogel	Blake Burroughs
Rob Lanza	New Year's Eve M.C.

Director	Rob Reiner
Producer	Ben Cosgrove; Paula Weinstein; Steven Soderbergh
Writer	Ted Griffin

Old pro Shirley MacLaine steals her every scene in Rumor Has It..., a very curiously conceived comedy directed by Rob Reiner (When Harry Met Sally..., The Princess Bride). Sarah (Jennifer Aniston, The Good Girl) arrives at her sister's wedding with her fiance Jeff (Mark Ruffalo, 13 Going on 30). She's already feeling anxiety-ridden about her impending marriage when she gleans from some odd hints from her grandmother Katherine (MacLaine, The Apartment, Terms of Endearment) that her family was the basis for the movie The Graduate. Quicker that you can say "Mrs. Robinson" she slips away from Jeff to investigate, suspecting that the guy Dustin Hoffman's character was based on--Beau Burroughs (Kevin Costner, Tin Cup)--might be her actual father...well, from there the plot takes a few twists, but this is not a movie that succeeds based on its story (which never really becomes persuasive). Instead, Rumor Has It... rests on the surprisingly complex and mature emotional interactions between the characters (particularly given that it's a movie about someone refusing to make choices in her life). Aniston won't win any awards for this, but she certainly gives her role more depth than a typical romantic comedy heroine; Costner and Ruffalo are both in fine form; and MacLaine appears just often enough to inject some delightfully prickly personality into a movie that often teeters on the edge of too much niceness. Also featuring Richard Jenkins (Six Feet Under) and Mena Suvari (American Beauty). --Bret Fetzer